C –

Forgive me, counselor, but I fear you may have missed the mark with this one. Too much of that Hollywood air is my diagnosis. The prose is, as always, richly textured and painstakingly precise, but I can’t get past the gratuitous use of product placement in the manuscript.

For example, in chapter six the narrator is warming up a Tombstone pizza, even though the story takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Chapter eleven is just ad copy for Men’s Warehouse. In several instances, page numbers are replaced with the Toyota logo. And it just continues like that: Mountain Dew, Tag Heuer, Charmin, Reebok, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Williams-Sonoma…

Here’s my advice: Sit on the manuscript for a few months. If you still feel strongly about the novel, we can talk more seriously about it and the changes that would need to be made for this book to see the light of day. Otherwise, I think you should move on to a new project. And for god’s sake, stay out of Los Angeles.

Your Friend,

Daniel Lamberti

Albert A. Klopp, Inc.